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Men Get Jail for Spamming Porn

Two men have been sentenced to jail for being involved in a spam scam, according to the U.S. DOJ (Department of Justice). James Schaffer, resident of Paradise Valley, AZ and Jeffrey Kilbride, resident of Venice, CA were proved guilty in June 2007 for acting against the CAN-SPAM Act. They were also charged of committing fraud, engaging in money laundering, and performing many other offensive acts, the DOJ announced.

Schaffer and Kilbride had sent a series of unsolicited e-mails containing links to porn Websites at several e-mail addresses they had purchased. Phoenix federal court convicted the pair on a number of charges after putting them on trial for three weeks to finally sentence them. But the federal judge sentenced Kilbride for a longer period of six years because he attempted to stop a victim from giving testimony at the court trial, said the DOJ.

According to the documents at the court, the two spammers started their business in 2003 when they earned $2 Million in commissions. In 2004, from January to September, Schaffer, Kilbride and another partner distributed over 600,000 spam mails. They received commissions on the basis of the number of visitors to the pornographic sites during the spamming operation.

Schaffer and Kilbride sent their messages from Amsterdam servers to make them appear as if they were coming from abroad. But actually, their place of origin was Phoenix. The men got the assistance of three other co-conspirators in this malicious operation. The spammers were penalized for an amount of $1.3 Million to cover the victims' losses.

As per the sentence, Schaffer and Kilbride are required to pay $100,000 in fine and $77,500 in compensation of damages to AOL. The federal judge further ordered the two men to pay $1.1 Million, the amount they accumulated from the scam.

According to the DOJ, the case was the first one relating to violation of the CAN-SPAM Act that was presented before a judges' panel. Previous prosecutions relating to breach of the anti-spam act led to defendants pleading guilty. A notable example is Adam Vitale, the so-called 'Spam King' who has to serve federal prison for 11 years after he admitted his crime.

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